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Rangers use unique song to celebrate wins

by
Tal Pinchevsky
/ NHL.com

NEW YORK -- Every NHL team has a specific song cued up in their locker room to celebrate a victory, typically a contemporary rock or hip-hop anthem. Entering Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Second Round series against the Pittsburgh Penguins, the New York Rangers would like nothing more than to hear a 1970s disco classic when the final horn sounds.

The Rangers' celebratory song in these playoffs, as it has been the entire season, is "Right Back Where We Started From," a hit for British singer Maxine Nightingale in 1976. The song is older than any of the players but has been an enjoyable, if unlikely, way for the team to celebrate a win. If all goes well for the Rangers on Sunday, they'll be hearing it after Game 6 at Madison Square Garden (7 p.m. ET; NBCSN, CBC, RDS).

The Penguins lead the best-of-7 series 3-2.

"We've heard that song all year after wins," defenseman Marc Staal said. "Every year you kind of get a different song for wins. When you hear that song again, it gives you a good feeling of winning. It's a lot better than silence."

The classic disco tune has a tangential relationship with hockey. The song figures prominently in the 1977 film "Slap Shot." When an early-season conversation suddenly turned to the film, players and coaches agreed that they should share the song with the fictional Charlestown Chiefs.

So the New York Rangers embracing the '70s anthem is more a tribute to the film than to their love for disco music.

"It's a great song, but it has that hockey reference there," forward Brian Boyle said.

During the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the celebratory song has been accompanied by a new tradition. With each win, the Rangers player who is selected to don the team's Broadway Hat pastes a new piece onto a wall-mounted puzzle resembling the Stanley Cup. The puzzle, which is accompanied by photographs of each Broadway Hat recipient, will be completed only if New York wins 16 games to hoist the Stanley Cup.

"That's new this year; 16 pieces, I guess. I don't know who started that, probably the coaching staff," Boyle said. "It's just kind of our season as a whole in the background."